This guidance report offers early years professionals seven practical evidence-based recommendations to provide every child--but particularly those from disadvantaged homes--with a high quality and well-rounded grounding in early literacy, language and communication. One recommendation focuses on the importance of high quality interactions between…

The reauthorization of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act, referred to as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), emphasizes evidence-based interventions while giving states and districts new flexibility on the use of federal funds, including funds that could be used to support social and emotional learning (SEL). The authors review…

Social and emotional competencies are proving critical to students' success in the classroom and in life. Although the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) does not explicitly reference social and emotional learning (SEL), this legislation in fact offers opportunities to support school-based SEL interventions. How is SEL supported by ESSA? Which SEL…

This brief examines the research on community schools, with two primary emphases. First, it explores whether the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opens the possibility of investing in well-designed community schools to meet the educational needs of low-achieving students in high-poverty schools. And second, it provides support to…

The majority of children from lower income families enter elementary school well behind their peers in reading, math, and general knowledge. Poor academic achievement in the early grades is associated with a range of social problems such as failure to complete high school, increased risk of unintended pregnancy, increased criminal activity, and…

As the education reform movement increasingly focuses on teachers and teaching, educators, policy-makers, and researchers need valid and reliable measures that can be used to evaluate individual teachers, provide guidance for improving teaching performance, and support research in ways that advance instruction and classroom dialog and practice. A…

The field of special education, and specifically the area of intellectual disabilities, has undergone dramatic changes in terminology, evaluation practices, service delivery models, expectations for learning, career development, and independent living opportunities. "Guidelines: Intellectual Disabilities in Educational Settings" is…

Poverty-related factors place children at higher risk for disabilities and also serve as barriers to families accessing services for their children and themselves. Early childhood practitioners can play a critical role in supporting families by providing services to overcome these obstacles and by working in partnership with specialized early…

This article considers issues in helping gifted students at risk due to cultural, economic, or social factors separating them from the mainstream, including identification and intervention, program standards, local program issues, and philosophical and definitional issues. Data from national and local studies, overall recommendations and a…

Over the past decade, the number of homeless children in America has more than doubled. Educators, however, are still legally obligated to enroll and support them, because of the passage of the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001, which reauthorized the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Although schools cannot solve homelessness,…

A "Discovery Program" implemented in 1989 to help underprivileged gifted and talented students in Israel advance in their chosen fields is described. The importance of local administration and participation is stressed, as are optimal ratios of underprivileged to privileged youth for maximum benefit to all. (PB)

Purpose: The limited evidence of effectiveness of existing teenage pregnancy strategies which focus on sex education, together with growing evidence that factors such as poor school ethos, disaffection, truancy, poor employment prospects and low expectations are associated with teenage pregnancy, has increased interest in interventions which…

Evaluation of an instrumental enrichment program with 80 gifted children (ages 10-12) from culturally disadvantaged backgrounds and a follow-up study 4 years later showed: (1) generalization effects on verbal and nonverbal thinking tasks, and (2) durability of effects on thinking tasks and broad generalization in school achievement. (Author/DB)

This report describes a program designed to encourage minority and financially, socially, or educationally disadvantaged incoming, freshman students to pursue health profession career goals. Sixteen at-risk students were selected to participate in a summer intervention program in West Virginia; a control group of 16 pre-medicine or pre-dentistry…

In Belle Glade, Florida, a slum populated by Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, migrant farmworkers, and Haitians, where the incidence of most major health risks was far greater than anywhere else in the state, a program was planned and partially implemented which aimed to provide health services to at-risk, disadvantaged teenage mothers and their…